Does Spring Hide Its Joy
Kali Malone’s 2019 album, *The Sacrificial Code*, was one of those unusual LPs that made hardcore minimalism sound as simple and intuitive as folk music. Recorded with cellist Lucy Railton and sunn O))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley, *Does Spring Hide Its Joy* is, effectively, a lattice of overlapping drones whose longest performance (there are three included here) runs for three hours. The fundamental question with music like this, then, is when and how do you listen to it? All at once or in pieces? As background or as the object of attention? From a performance standpoint, the album is an incredible feat of patience and sensitivity. But you figure part of what has made the Denver-born, Stockholm-based Malone the People’s Minimalist is her emotionality, which grounds the music’s conceptual aspirations in feelings—melancholy, reflection, sublimated longing—anyone can understand.
Presented as a sprawling three-hour epic, the composer’s drone piece for guitar, cello, and sine wave oscillators seeks new rhythms within the interminable sweep of pandemic time.
Enlisting Stephen O’Malley and Lucy Railton, Kali Malone unveils a sprawling work that just about rewards what it demands.
For Colorado native Kali Malone, finding the right tuning and harmony is a way of life. At 16, she met Swedish composer Ellen Arkbro at a Ne...
Does Spring Hide Its Joy by Kali Malone: a record that pushes the boundaries impressively, but needs to be experienced in the flesh